Seeing Blue

I pointed this out the other day, but way too many iOS apps use blue icons. I mean way too many, it is to the point where I could make entire home screens of nothing but blue icons. It is not just junky apps that use blue either, some of the best apps out there […]

I pointed this out the other day, but way too many iOS apps use blue icons. I mean way too many, it is to the point where I could make entire home screens of nothing but blue icons. It is not just junky apps that use blue either, some of the best apps out there use blue for their app icon and it needs to stop. Our iOS devices are capable of displaying so much more color, please developers choose something other than blue.

Now I don’t want my devices to look like a damned rainbow or anything, but I do want my app icons to look somewhat different so that I can easily find the icon I am looking for.

For instance currently on my iPhone:

89 apps in total

35 of which are blue

6 of which are red

39.3% Blue

6.7% Red

On my iPad:

66 apps in total

21 of which are blue

3 of which are red

31.8% Blue

4.5% Red

On my Mac’s Dock:

11 apps (not counting finder & trash)

4 of which are blue

0 of which are red

36.3% Blue

0% Red

Am I the only one that finds this crazy? No, I know I am not, I have seen others talk about this before. Where are all the good red, yellow, orange app icons? Gowalla’s is orange and it is perhaps one of the easiest apps to find on my iPhone because of it.

Again I am not advocating that developers get all crazy and force my home screen into looking like a rainbow or a Jackson Pollock painting, I just want a little more diversity.

Let’s expand our use of colors when it comes to iOS icons, and hell Mac icons for that matter too.

I was being very conservative in the counts above, as there are some apps that could also qualify as blue, but that blue wasn’t the main color of the icon.